Spring RTS Engine

Why are all maps so small? I like gigantic maps where an Intimidator isnt able to shoot over the whole map and where a win needs a lot of time because the bases of the enemies are as big as a city :D.
I speak of a size of at least 20x20.
Or am i the only one who likes big maps?

well it requires an enormus ammount of memory to make that big ones

so i guess not many ppl have that

Some of mine are... try them out. I do plan on finaly remaking King of the Rock (dave the brave has been on at me again) once I finsh my next map (super large tree feature map, thats large trees, not a large map ) and that atleast 32x32...

aGorm

I much prefer the fast edge-of-your-seat gameplay of smaller maps.

If you like huge maps, go learn how to make maps :)

An plans on making Real Earth to the new spring? Buggi??

It better be redone entirely if it is. OTA heightmaps are often mediocre at best in spring, and that one just wouldn't do it justice.

Real Earth + Minispring = Civ 4

OTA's The Real Earth map was a pile of trash anyway. A for effort, F for everything else. Fucking Antarctica was purple and had more landmass than the rest of the world combined, and the starts were in space (the map just ENDED where space began, which looks outright BAD in TA's view).

Buggi's Earth maps in the old map format were much better, in terms of heightmap, since he used actual satellite imagery to create them. However... he also used the satellite images for the texture maps, which looked bad, and the "mountains" were barely rolling hills. Plus Spring's trees look really bad, especially in places where there's supposed to be rainforest... and on a personal level, I felt they were too small to represent Earth. They were indeed large maps, but when most buildings take up a large percentage of England you know there's a problem with scale. For that matter, that complaint applies to OTA's Real Earth as well.

I don't think planetary maps work for 2D-map games (in the sense of the world is a plane, not a sphere; not that the world lacks a vertical axis). Real life locations can be great to make... A 30x30+ map of *just* the British Isles (and maybe part of the European coast) would be far more playable in my eyes than a map of the entire western hemisphere at the same size.

Of course, I do prefer maps much smaller than that for online play... games dragging out for hours bores most people, including me.

[/rant]

That's why we desperately need 4 things:

1: Multi-layered heights/maps. Having 2-story fortresses is just the beginning. Think bridges, or even MOON BASES.

2: Spherical terrain: For when one hemisphere just isn't enough domination. Look at games like Populous: The Beginning for a GREAT implamentation of a 2d game on a 3d sphere. Such an implamentation should be EASY on hardware for Spring. (Though a fair amount of coding needed)

3: Modular maps. Think the Tile system from OTA, except Tiles could be placed Vertically for multi-layer suppourt (#1). Also, not only would HUGE maps take less ram, if a tile distance>fog visibility, cull it! Don't render it. It'd save on FPS. And GIGANTIC 128x128 would not only run easy on older machines (bar the 2000 unit cap), but also be SMALL. That is if you already had a large tileset. [EDIT]This would also facilitate an EASY random map generator.[/EDIT]

4: Built-in Map Scaling suppourt. Now, people have complained about this before. What about maps that are supposed to be a certain scale? Well, make a special tag for maps that CAN be scaled up/down, that way if a map maker wants his map scalable at lack of detail, it's his choice.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it the unit logic that is the limiting factor in terms of scaling to larger battles? I do not think that the graphics in spring are that taxing in themselves, although the textures might be. Yes, bridges and other intelligently placed multi-layer features would be the greatest thing since sliced bread. However, these things would pose an interesting challenge for path-finding. Since A* traditionally works on a 2d grid it would be an interesting challenge to optimize it while allowing for additional layers.

Also, hopefully Buggi will continue development of minispring as that is an 'easy' way to quadruple map size!

Optimus Prime wrote:Why are all maps so small? I like gigantic maps ... a size of at least 20x20. ...

There are quite a few maps like those. You probably just haven't found them.

Beware, though, that little people plays those because they end up very frequently in a Powerpoint Slideshow.

Actually I'm making good headway with gabbas material, and the voronoi diagrams used can have as many as 300 dimensions nm 2, and still be superior at fidnign mroe effective paths.

Finally... Making Pathing work better will solve all of springs problems... since you started it you arn't allowed to sleep anymore until it's finished...

ahem, voronai diagrams and the associated obstacle polygon based maps and systems still relie on A* for pathfinding however they make the whole system a lot mroe intelligent. My work is aimed thus at augmenting this into NTAI 0.3 because of its strategic and tactical aspects.

man it would suck if the ai-conrolled units had better pathing then the normal way...

I have limited resources and I'm in an almighty AI push atm...